Dealing with social services.

I have never tried to wrestle a hagfish, but everything I have seen suggests that doing so would be messy and unproductive: like trying to get Social Services to admit that their contracted out agents are not doing a good job of looking after a vulnerable young woman (my former foster sister).

Their tactics in meetings are to completely ignore any big, damaging issues raised and reduce the discussion to symptoms: a systemic failure of management and poor staff recruitment leading to, say spilled cooked food left under a bed for three days, a situation not remedied despite numerous complaints. That’s a call for a cleaning rota.

An untrained member of staff incapable of handling a ‘customer’ with scoloiosis is not a cue for discussions about bringing in ‘assistive technology’, it’s a flag that Avalon (can’t find their site) are putting untrained people in to care with a person with special needs.  A person whose back I don’t want breaking because some lackwit organization hasn’t trained her carer.

I don’t want my little sister to be another of those cases where some solemn high-up is paraded in front of a camera to say ‘lessons will be learned’. But having seen Social Services up close today, I can see how very, very easily it happens when they excuse poor management, lack of training and bad staffing in their contractors. The result is the sort of appaling service we see week in, week out.

A proper organization would recognize the failures, apologize and sack the contracted out agents.

As we say on boats, you can’t polish a turd. And that is just what North Yorkshire County Council Social Services tried to do today.

You have any similar experiences, angryfosterbrother(at)gmail.com is waiting to hear in confidence.